June 22, 2014

It's charming and delightful that we anagnoresis and peripetia folk have exposed our children to so much of our music. The young 'uns may not be able to say all the names of the members of the Who or the Stones (humorously - Mick Jagger certainly believes himself to be the most famous man on the planet; Keith Richards may well be aware that most under age 35 know him only as "that guy from Pirates of the Caribbean who looks like Johnny Depp").

So ...

That deaf, dumb and blind kid sure plays a mean pinball.

Pinball was one of my favorite "sports" back in the day. Now, a retro cultural artifact, like Pop Rocks, Pogs and Pabst Blue Ribbon.

Everyone who views the Temple Grandin movie instantly "gets" the concluding scene, where an adult Temple and her mother attend an autism conference and the audience filled with parents and autistic children, desperate for any type of information and help, are "treated" to an expert who knows nothing of what he speaks, but is blaring at the top of his lungs. An autistic child who is spinning to comfort herself is told to sit down; Temple stands and declares, "No! I think spinning is good!" The audience immediately turns. They gravitate to her like the small fish did to me and Bruce in the Sierras last weekend, rapt, in identical ranks.

So, people "get" this. It's been enough time that autism is known and is beginning to be seen as a different form of perception from the majority of people. The problems experienced by people on the autism spectrum are understood by a plurality of others -- perhaps by now, a majority. And people are even beginning to understand that the gifts of perception of those on the autism spectrum are valuable, needed, necessary, essential. Truly a different ability, not a "disability."

I myself, enjoyed being deaf, dumb and blind. There was a comfort in it. It enabled me to tell myself I was "successful" in the eyes of the world. It facilitated social acceptance. I had an entire mask that pretended to hear and see, and which spoke for me. I have now perhaps 2 million words on this blog; to my satisfaction and no shame, I see the evolution inherent here. And I didn't go from "nowhere" to "somewhere." I was always and ever, writing the glimpses of what I did see, hear and feel.

To see well, one must also be willing to be seen. To hear distinctly, one must also be willing to be heard. To speak truly, one must also be willing to listen.

On these counts, the majority of people fail utterly. Is it their "fault?" No, it is as they are both born and raised. Our culture seeks to dull the natural senses and perception through so many means. It overlays a false sense of universality -- this is why there is such a great rush for dominance in our creative forms. Films don't undertake to tell any type of truth. The majority seek to "deliver" the expected, in order to make as much money as possible. They are carbon copies of carbon copies of carbon copies, so degraded in image that perhaps only the eyes and mouth are visible of the original image.

Food, the same. All these tomatoes must look alike. They must stay good over long truck journeys. They are picked green and "ripened" with gas. They are like red balls of wood. Nobody slices up wood and puts it on their sandwiches and in their salads. All these chips must be the same. All these cookies, as well. This is a bright orange orange, and improbably, even this hardest of fruits to degrade is bland and watery inside. You thought that was a peach? Doesn't it remind you of a breast implant? I can't even comment on the center aisles of the market as I haven't shopped there for years. Chicken tastes like white paste. Hamburger has little flavor; no wonder people want to buy the pre-flavored patties in frozen boxes.

We arrange our gardens in neat rows. We bisect them with concrete paths. Along the path are benches for those too fat, weak or tired to move their legs for longer than a tenth of a mile. We pass from one place to another in large, loud vehicles, which we falsely believe conceal us from those around - our armored cars.

We watch those we falsely believe "lead" us on television. Fox News or MSNBC - two oppositely-charged particles revolving around the same rotten nucleus.

We send our children to school at no younger than 5, and no older than 6, with rare exceptions. All born between certain dates start school at the same time. The younger ones begin with a disadvantage; the older ones an innate advantage in being a bit older, bigger, more mature. Eight months at such a young age is a tremendous difference. In the schoolyard, we smile to see our children emulate chickens in the barnyard, the stronger pecking the weaker, sometimes to death. Chickens appear to have once been dinosaurs, like all birds. They are domesticated into horrible behaviors - only certain breeds could survive even a few days in the wild. Is it the chicken which, trapped in its barnyard, emulates its master?

What about the fact that we've domesticated ourselves into these same chickens is so difficult to comprehend?

Out "there," in the land we haven't yet managed to domesticate and remake in our desired form, are the animals which remain. The vast ocean, which some believe may be a living thing, with its own thoughts. The earth itself, which we've changed only an infinitesimal amount despite our desire to believe we rule and conquer all.

If the chickens leave the barnyard and the people are gone, in ten years' time or less, it will be as if there was no barnyard there at all.

I'm not saying this to be frightening. I'm saying this because there is a choice. It isn't "all or nothing" -- either live like this guy or live like Lady Gaga (who wears makeup to sleep in case she meets the man of her dreams there).

We can all be kind. We can all stop talking for a bit, and listen. I've picked up the "voice" thing for a bit and was at the cafe in San Juan Capistrano yesterday. While most conversations around me were pleasant, if not very deep, one young woman's brutal selfishness inspired me to wish I could leap up and punch her in the face (of course I did not). I think this is the mix. I think the majority of people are well-meaning, but deaf, dumb and blind, wandering through life never really seeing, hearing or feeling anything that's real. This includes other people -- but also the world itself and everything in it. And there are among us the brutes. They may not even realize what they're doing, but in most cases, they absolutely do.

People understand this as the "wolf in sheep's clothing" metaphor. We don't have a myth or legend for what is happening now, and I don't really know a metaphor for "us"/me/we. All I am saying is, open your eyes. Wake up. Listen. Be. Live in the present. You will not get much work done at first, I don't think. But that's fine, since you've been working for the wolf anyway. And that wolf is not, I think, precisely human. You are.

June 20, 2014

For some weeks, I would lie alone in the quiet night, imagining what it would be to take all my walls down. So long they had been up, so tall, broad and strong. Brutal and jagged, as thick as the Berlin Wall. I'd seen a piece of the wall, put up in the center of the Chapman campus like a hideous sculpture. It's not far from Adam Smith's bronze head. Students pass by this monument every day and don't know what the ugly sculpture is, just as they do not know Adam Smith. It's a tall hunk of dirty white concrete topped with twisted rebar, splattered with graffiti, some written in foreign tongues, most written in no language save agony.

As Temple Grandin sees her life as a series of doors that she opens and walks through, so too have I seen my life as a series of bridges. One crossed with a path to follow, and then another, and another, and another.

And this bridge, the highest, like looking down from the Golden Gate Bridge to the chill gray water below. The drop is some 270 feet, 27 storeys. Of the 2,000 people who've jumped off the bridge since it was built, only 33 have survived, and of those, only a handful have recovered from their injuries.

One of the survivors said, "the second my hands and feet left the rail I realized I had made a mistake, I realized how much I needed to live, or didn’t want to die."

For me, it is not to jump off the bridge, it is to cross it without falling.

And I am so afraid.

Once when I was young, my grandmother was in a rare contemplative mood and wished to tell me of the days before my mother died. She often spoke of driving to Los Angeles from Redlands each day to see her. Well now I know such trips; when I was young I could not imagine them. But I was eager for any word about my mother.

Nana said she went in one day to find my mother out of bed and lying on the floor beside the window, unable to stand.

"I was dreaming, mother," she said. "I dreamt I saw the most beautiful color, and I was trying to reach it. But I fell."

I asked what the color was, though I already knew. I had dreamt of this color my entire life.

Before I could really write, I wrote about it. I told all of our stories mixed into one. Nana pointed out the old copper pot on the patio, and its patina. That was the color. It was, it is, the color of time.

These newborn eyes, the color of old copper pots which have been left in the sun. The color of a nugget of turquoise taken straight from the earth, of the sea off Laguna at sunset, of what you are moving toward, of what will be as well as what was. Your eyes. Your child's eyes. Your mother's eyes. Shot with time's arrow, melted, forged into a pot.

To say that this is my favorite color is to say that I like to breathe air. It is as much a part of me as my blood, the muscles in my legs, my fingers.

I think often of the choice my mother made. I would have made the same choice. Rather than grasp for a few more miserable sick months, just let go. Give my life to my baby.

That baby was me.

I did make the same choice as was given to me and would make it ten thousand times over. But I had no real risk to my life, and instead it was the baby's life that was taken. In terms of his eyes, they were blue. So blue.

Grief is like biting into a crab apple, over and over. Regret is a bittersweet orange bad at the heart. Loneliness the comfort of a rotten, threadbare sheet.

And how I have loved such things. My daily bread and meat. They have the comfortable familiarity of Poe lifting Virginia's dusty white bones from her grave, gathering the bone and mold and death in a mad embrace.

And ahead, I see the color of time.

Yet I remain fearful to leave these things behind. Reluctant to cross the bridge and step into the clear blue sky. I do not wish to fall. But around me, the bridge is crumbling. The walls are cracked.

I must cross now; I have no real choice.

If I stay on the bridge, I will surely fall, and if I go back, behind the walls, I will die.

For some weeks I have been feeling the world around me more than I feel myself. First, while swimming, I felt the water about my body, and my body hardly at all. For the first time, I swam with the water, not fighting it. I went fast. Then walking with Gambit, his eager body pulling forth, I felt the world about my face and arms and hands, the warm sun on my cheeks. Dancing on the patio after Jay Lake died, I said a prayer for his soul and felt the world about my hands, and I let it lift them, then felt it holding my muscles as I danced to the music of the air. The wind rushed through the trees. A bird sang, and then took flight.

Then came a bear, his black eyes flashing. A buck chasing a doe through the forest. A doe and her fawn eating calmly, no fear at all.

I already know that I will never truly live if I do not cross these steps. If I do not take his hand, if I do not truly kiss his lips, feel his blood rushing, feel his heart beating, feel his love through his hands. If I do not let this thing happen, if I do not let him feel me –

I will be ashes, clay, dust, mold, bones in a grave.

And like all things we think to be so difficult at first, the doing is as easy as slipping into warm water.

I slip from my skin into his, and he into mine.

We are the buck and the doe. We are one under the crystal blue sky. The sun is like fire; our shadows meet. This savage black image, raw as hell, naked on the flat gray rock, is who we are.

I have crossed the great divide and have not fallen; he fell a short way, but got up again.

Yes, I have been afraid. I have shivered alone in the cold night.

But now I am warm and unafraid.

And on my finger, because we are people, and people make such things and do such things to remind themselves of eternal truth, things of which the buck and doe and bear have no need, for they never forget how to live, I wear a stone that is, improbably, impossibly, inevitably – the perfect, exact color of time.

"Reclaim your mind and get it out of the hands of the cultural engineers who want to turn you into a half-baked moron consuming all this trash that's being manufactured out of the bones of a dying world." - Terence McKenna

Terence (1946-2000) is referred to as "The Timothy Leary of the 90s."

Because I am a physical empath, I tend to understand things first through physical metaphor. So much of what is provided to us as books, especially fiction, but also a great deal of popular non-fiction, film and television - and indeed, similar media such as games and internet content, is akin to junk/fast food.

I've done a lot of work, not just on a personal level, but also working with businesses and entrepreneurs, in the area of real food. Food is tangible, and it's something (like reading and writing in a population with 100% literacy or nearly-so) that everyone participates in.

When people eat what I call "corporate food" constantly, it dulls their tastebuds. It makes it difficult for them to enjoy real food. I remember a little girl from our neighborhood when Meredith was young. She was raised on a diet of fast food (Del Taco and Taco Bell, mostly) and literally cried when offered celery with peanut butter at our house. She not only gagged when she tried to eat it, it made her cry. And yes, she was already overweight at a very young age.

The addictive, taste-killing properties of "corporate food" is the direct cause of the obesity epidemic and the corresponding epidemic of "diseases of civilization." It's not a proximate cause, it is the cause, because this food inspires addiction and produces corresponding lethargy leading to physical inactivity. There should scarcely be a person alive in America today who does not know that eating fast foods and junk foods today (or simply eating out daily) is bad for their physical health. To say something like hot Cheetos is "food" is like saying Miley Cyrus' "Wrecking Ball" video is Beethoven's 9th Symphony.

Well, there are plenty of people around who find Beethoven's 9th "boring." Even some who might prefer the Miley Cyrus auditory and visual object to an actual music video by a singer-songwriter of talent. That "song" took six people to write. If they're so music-impoverished this is their idea of favorite music then ... maybe they want a little harder-core junk food than Flaming Hot Cheetos to eat as well.

This crap pushed out on the public by - one of my favorite terms, and I can't remember who came up with it, but probably Hitchens - it feels like him - "patent leather-haired vulgarians" with nothing but cynical contempt for any and all foolish enough to lap up their beastly products - it's ruined so many people's hearts and minds. There's out and out debasement and corruption, Dorian Gray-style (that's a character from classic literature). Then there's just people who can't read chapters over 500 words in length. Or, who are so accustomed to reading first-person narratives of characters of 16-22 years of age that they can't read anything else. There are people who think all they can read is James Patterson, or David Baldacci or whomever.

Oh why, oh why, is this so? We are told "people don't read any longer." Then we are told they are only interested in these simple, debased products. I'm not writing this to slag on individual authors, but here's a semi-bestseller not of particular note - a wholly commercial project from beginning to end, exploitive of the author who was certainly not capable of writing something worth so many people reading it, and made into an understandably mediocre film by people who probably wished they were dead by the time they were able to wrap these colossal, derivative bores.

Even Mondelez, even Cargill, even PepsiCo (especially PepsiCo) have realized that they must move toward real food if they want to stay in business. Ten years ago, there were 60 free-range, grass fed cattle ranches in North America. Today there are more than 2,000. About half of the produce section in my local Ralphs is organic, and they've opened a locally-sourced section as well. I can buy hormone-free, organic, grass-fed meats in the store. Yes, I pay more, but it's there. A decade ago, there very nearly were no family-owned ranches left. The family-owned farms were nearly gone. Today, they are coming back. Because people are hungry for real food.

I believe people are also hungry for real books. This is what real people tell me. This is what I see, for example, when Igor reads his real poems. I see faces light up, I hear expressions of astonishment and delight.

Unlike nearly every other industry, the publishing industry is still caught in the business mentality of the 1950s, when they were thrilled to discover food technology and the ability to turn eating into a giant corporate license to print money as opposed to an activity central to life, family functioning, and social interaction. Please do not tell me that the corporate foodists of the past were unaware that processed cheese by-products were not addictive, and that ag hormones didn't also have their corresponding similar impact on young and growing bodies. They knew. As to whether they knew rampant obesity, heart disease, cancer and other concerns would arise, that I do not know.

Now - for business reasons - big food sees that it must go a different direction. People simply no longer want to kill themselves. They are physically choosing life.

We need to choose the life of the mind as well. Killing our brains, deadening and anesthetising them - it's making all of us Americans stupid. It's turning us into weak sheep who will accept the politics put forth in our country. It's making kids who can't find Italy (the "boot shaped" one) on a map, much less know who Mussolini was.

It's making people who are regular readers brag that they "don't like the classics." Hey, regular readers who "don't like the classics," are you enjoying the Penny Dreadful show? It was made by people who "like the classics." Did you like True Detective? It was made by people interested in a little bit different kind of classic. Imagine what I thought when "The King in Yellow" was brought up on the show. "That can't be," I thought. Oh yes, it could be -- oh yes, it was.

No, it's not all bad. But the vibrancy is coming out of film and TV now. And that is limited. That visual, time-limited medium is brilliant at what it does but it cannot communicate complex emotions, ideas and concepts across time and space.

There were two notable products made in 1605 that are still sold and consumed in the same form as they are today: Don Quixote, and Hamlet. These are today's first loaves of real bread made by wheat and yeast and hand, these are today's version of that first bottle of wine.

Everyone, everywhere, in all sectors, are hungering for real things. Let's take just that wine, for instance. A vintner will tell you all about the grape, the weather, the soil, the appellation, and every tiny aspect that goes into making fine wine, as opposed to, oh, say Annie Green Springs or Thunderbird.

Well, what's the word?

The vintner who makes the real wine cares about the person who drinks it, and cares about every single thing in that bottle.

The writer who makes the real book cares about the person who reads it, and cares about every single word in that text.

A publisher who has a clue - cares about these same things as well. This cannot be said at present, for the most part. The only way we have to communicate beyond time and space, to tell stories encompassing the imagination, the heart, the mind and the best that is in us -- as Faulkner said,

"I decline to accept the end of man. It is easy enough to say that man is immortal simply because he will endure: that when the last dingdong of doom has clanged and faded from the last worthless rock hanging tideless in the last red and dying evening, that even then there will still be one more sound: that of his puny inexhaustible voice, still talking.

I refuse to accept this. I believe that man will not merely endure: he will prevail. He is immortal, not because he alone among creatures has an inexhaustible voice, but because he has a soul, a spirit capable of compassion and sacrifice and endurance. The poet's, the writer's, duty is to write about these things. It is his privilege to help man endure by lifting his heart, by reminding him of the courage and honor and hope and pride and compassion and pity and sacrifice which have been the glory of his past. The poet's voice need not merely be the record of man, it can be one of the props, the pillars to help him endure and prevail."

He was speaking about the Cold War, and the effect it had on young writers, causing them to give up hope and belief in humanity.

I am speaking about our cultural desire to really live, and the war we are presently fighting against those who wish to feast on our own bodies and minds. They wish to take our hard-earned money. Debase our families and daily lives. They have no interest in who we are except as something to support their ravenous lifestyles. They have made us slaves to their needs.

Do you know what Frederick Douglass did as the most-salient thing in his earning his freedom and being probably the one person who did the most to spur on Emancipation? What thing he did that could have cost him his life? Look him up, by the way. Use your spare brain (Google).

He taught himself to read and write. It's real. Most of the books that are shoved in your face: are not.

June 01, 2014

I realized something extraordinary while re-reading Lois McMaster Bujold's wonderful Barrayar books. First, these are as fresh today as when they were written nearly 30 years ago. There's not a thing dated about them - fortunately - because they're set in the far future in an imagined space world created by Lois. And yet they're not "strange," weird, or even filled with completely unpro'noun'c'ble names with in'eXp'lic'aa'bl apostrophes.

So amazing.

So Old Lady did some digging. By the way, "Old Lady" is one of my joke nicknames. Gambit and Ollie love "Old Lady" as differentiated from "Young Lady" (Meredith).

Shards of Honor is the first book in the Vorkosigan Saga, and was published in 1986. Seriously, here are two of the reviews - these are pull quotes - from the book's Amazon sales page:

"Bujold has a nice hand with the complications . . . All in all, Shards is a worthy effort, and worth reading for any fan of SF romance." --Analog

Old Lady dug some more and also found these, to be perfectly fair -

"This superb first novel integrates a believable romance into a science fiction tale of adventure and war."- Booklist

"Possibly the best first novel of the year"- The Chicago Sun Times

And those second two are fair, and true. But if you only read the first two, you'd think these were "average" books, wouldn't you? Let's look at some of the other big contemporary books of that day.

Ender's Game (1985) by Orson Scott Card. Ender Wiggin is selected as a child able to combat the alien "Buggers" who are about to attack humanity for a third time. The boy believes he is playing a game, only to discover that the game is real, and he's killed, if my memory serves me right, millions of the insectoid aliens.

Ender's Game won the Hugo and Nebula Awards and of course, was recently made into a film, nearly 30 years after its first publication.

"Card has taken the venerable sf concepts of a superman and interstellar war against aliens, and, with superb characterization, pacing and language, combined them into a seamless story of compelling power. This is Card at the height of his very considerable powers—a major sf novel by any reasonable standards."—Booklist

Ender's competition for the Nebula Award included The Handmaid's Tale (1985) by Margaret Atwood. This equally-famous book, set in the "Republic of Gilead," ostensibly within the borders of the former United States, tells the story of Offred, who is a "handmaid" who's having The Commander (Fred's) baby. Reading this book made me sick to my stomach. I was sickened by finding their illicit (in the bizarre culture proposed) love affair vaguely titillating. It's just sad, depressing, and the theoretical "renaissance" which follows the dark ages portrayed seems poor and thin.

How fascinating - the featured reviews of Canadian author Atwood's work are from Canadian publications ... and they are not so glowing as the Ender's Game reviews (SURPRISE! Not.)

"The most poetically satisfying and intense of all Atwood's novels."-Maclean's

"The Handmaid's Tale is in the honorable tradition of Brave New World and other warnings of dystopia. It's imaginative even audacious, and conveys a chilling sense of fear and menace."-The Globe and Mail

Our other 1986 big books include Greg Bear's Blood Music, in which nanotechnology goes wild and subsumes humanity. Greg Bear is a really great writer and this book is unforgettable. And sad and negative and apocalyptic. His opposing pole, David Brin, published The Postman that year, which is also post-apocalyptic, but posits that things we share - such as mail delivery - may eventually save us all despite ourselves. I remember reading the original Postman novella and thinking, "I love this writer. I love that it's not all doom and gloom and it's about love and hope and courage and humanity."

Lois McMaster Bujold's Barrayar books are not "space opera" in the denigrating terms that usually implies. I certainly cannot find any random, inexcusable failures in so-called "worldbuilding." They are meticulous in all aspects of "realism," and examine such issues as types of weaponry and their use, including moral and ethical concerns -- like stunners, which do not kill, vs. disruptors, which always kill or gravely disable, creating human "vegetables."

And in terms of "world," with all the cultures of Bujold's future space society, she brings together two total badasses, Cordelia Naismith (pictured on cover above) and Aral Vorkosigan - worthy of Cordelia's honor and general badassery (which he almost immediately recognizes). These books are extremely well-written, fast-paced, and just in general bigger-ass efforts than any of the more publically-famous and commented on/referenced contemporaneous books I mentioned.

The Handmaid's Tale: enslaved woman trapped in sad, horrible life must have powerful man's baby just to stay alive.

Blood Music: guy comes up with amazing nanotechnology that could lead to immortality; instead, it swallows everybody and makes us all biosoup.

Shards of Honor: There's all these planets and a big-ass war brewing, and a powerful woman and man from the opposing sides and very different cultures navigate treacherous situations while falling in love ... eventually to found a dynasty that stands for the future and hope. The woman comes from a democratic, open society; the man from a closed, hierarchical one.

There's a Facebook Page dedicated to "Cordelia Naismith: Badass" - there are two members at present. Cordelia is a Betan survey ship Commander. Unlike attempts at portraying female commanders in some other media (i.e. Star Trek - who wants that lady captain?) this one works. Probably because Lois McMaster Bujold has something of a clue as to how people actually operate.

This morning, John Kessel commented on Facebook about how he'd been writing for some time about "What it is to be a man" in today's rapidly changing society. Well, I'd rather think it wouldn't be good to be a little boy tricked into killing millions, no matter how satisfying the "game" may seem at the time. Nor do I think it would be very good to be a guy who inadvertently invented nanotechnology that ate everybody alive. Nor would it be good to be The Commander, forced to enslave a woman to carry his child, and screw her behind closed doors while fending off questions from his understandably disgruntled wife.

Aral Vorkosigan's life was neither easy nor pleasant, but at least he could look himself in the mirror each morning and know he was looking on the face of an honorable man. And it happened all by accident, but he found a woman as powerful and honorable as himself in the course of his ... well, in the course of trying to keep his ass alive to fight another day. As to Cordelia, we all wish to find our mate or match, and so she did, although I don't think she ever got to finish her survey.

Is what I am saying clear? There was one book in 1985 that tagged where men and women need to go and can go. Can anybody make the intellectual argument that the machinery of making a child a stone-cold killer, or the machinery of human enslavement, or the deadly potential of out of control "science," is "better" - a better future vision - more "insightful," and better- written and generally all-around better for people to read? This book was not Ender's Game, nor was it The Handmaid's Tale, nor was it Blood Music, nor any of the others.

It wasn't about complaining. It was about doing. It showed how it's done with delight and flair and joy and thrills. This book was Shards of Honor, by Lois McMaster Bujold.

May 29, 2014

I was a very, very bad Amy at one of my Baycon panels. I think the programming committee saw that I'd checked I'd be willing to be on the "Romance in SF/F" panel and saw "female" and added me to this all-female lineup of diehard romance writers and readers.

Yeah. I wrote one delicate sex scene 10 years ago that I had to ask Ron Collins for help with. Mel in "To Kiss the Star" suffered from unrequited love for John. I only checked the box because I figured Astá and Broos were some type of big couple, like beta readers have been saying, referencing Gone With the Wind.

So I got there late due to being unable to locate the room. Here they are talking about their favorite and/or least-favorite "romance tropes." As seen on the beloved TV Tropes.org website. I think Broos and Astá might have belligerent sexual tension. Except they admit their feelings for each other and they do not actually fight, they just engage in who has the upper hand in each conversation/plot/plan. They're involved in serious life and death business together, not Anime swordplay as depicted on the little illustration for this "trope." The Knight in Sour Armor has a great picture - it's a knight made out of lemons.

I'm willing to say there's no "TV Trope" for Astá. I've been looking and she's not a bitch, she's not snarky, she's not innocent, she's not waiting to be saved; she is a mother and she is in love, and everything she knows and loves is at risk. Yeah, she's damaged, but she's still standing strong. She doesn't let it affect her ability to trust and love.

Not one of these people on the panel could name a strong female heroine. An audience member brought up Honor Harrington, the primary character in the popular books by Baycon Guest of Honor David Weber. Honor's apparently now in a triune marriage with a man and his disabled wife. When I asked if there were any popular romantic couples in which the female was significantly more powerful in practical terms than the male, an audience member suggested "Aurora in Four Voices" by Catherine Asaro, my friend who is one of the New People. Aurora is in love with some slacker artist chap.

So Bad Amy brought up Gone With the Wind. The more I think about this book, the more I realize that it's the great American novel to date. It can stand to War & Peace. It has considerable things in common with that book and the other great Russian novels. Immediately, the moderator said "oh, it's full of tropes." Scarlett's an "ice queen" or "ice bitch" or whatever. Rhett Butler is the "rogue with a heart of gold." And this just torqued me off.

I've wasted an hour looking through that TV Trope site. And I see NOTHING regarding art or literature on it. It's all stereotypical stuff. Art happens when it transcends stereotypes. Or "tropes."

Let me put it in a way people can understand since our culture renders most incapable of understanding Scarlett O'Hara as one of the greatest female characters in all literature, for all of her dislikeable qualities. Margaret Mitchell tagged what it was to be a woman of power in a time in which that power was twisted, turned, negative, brutal, damaging. She tagged what my grandmother was; what I very nearly became. What TV Trope is Hamlet?

Is he the "Hamlet" trope? There isn't one. There are superficial, non-comprehending "tropes" applied to Hamlet on this website. I loathe to quote Harold Bloom in a positive manner, but I will.

"We read to reflect and to be reflected," Bloom said in 2003. "You can make of the play ‘Hamlet' and the protagonist pretty much what you will, whether you are playgoer or reader, critic or director, actor or ideologue; push any stance or quest into it and the drama will illuminate what you have brought with you."

Yes, of course you can write something about the "rogue with a heart of gold" or "the ice queen" or any of the other "tropes" on that website. As audience members pointed out, there is nothing negative inherent in the website or the concept of "tropes." The only negative thing is that they reinforce "the expected."

The expected is something that cannot recognize the great artistic achievement of a book like Gone With the Wind. It is a society incapable of comprehending the individual human nature and dignity of any woman -- and only very seldom, the individual human nature and dignity of any man. Hamlet is one of the best examples of a fully-human character (as Bloom pointed out, and he also included Falstaff) I can think of and he has been around a very, very long time.

Celie, in The Color Purple, is she a trope? Or is she an individual with her own individual human voice and nature? What a nice trope that would be. Raped, semi-literate, abused black girl former slave. Nice trope huh? I recommended Jean Rhys' Wide Sargasso Sea to the audience. That book remains barely in print, as do most books written by females in earlier times of the 20th century (and to be fair - a number of excellent books by male authors as well). That book is about Creole Bertha Rochester, the mad woman in the attic from Jane Eyre. The mousy governess who gets the mysterious, tortured, dark and injured hero who is her true love: told as a bad trope ever since Jane Eyre, but in the book, a magnificent story. The vengeful madwoman in the attic who sets the house on fire: trope. Bertha in Wide Sargasso Sea - real woman. Oh, and Rochester is a brute. And he really always was, and how insightful of Jean Rhys to understand this. Bertha should never have left her island with him. He brutalized her and drove her to that attic of insanity.

That's a picture of Bertha Rochester - a monster - torturing Jane Eyre in the night, a woodcut from the Fritz Eichenberg-illustrated edition of Jane Eyre. I had this book, and Wuthering Heights, also illustrated by him, while growing up. I read them many times, poring over and over these intense pictures.

May 20, 2014

Let's see what the interwebs have to say. The top web result for this query, entitled "In Which These are the 100 Greatest Writers of All Time," has 14 female and 86 male writers on its top ten list, going all the way back to one of the first writers ever known -- a guy who may not even have been real -- Homer. Moving over to Wikipedia, an encyclopedic list of "The 100 Best Books of All Time" proposed by some survey of 100 writers conducted by the Norwegian Book Club, has 10 out of 100 books by 9 female authors (two books by Virginia Woolf are on the list).

In this survey, women require their own list -- otherwise they would barely appear at all. Fifteen of the list of 101 top writers "according to critics" are women. This online public voting website has 15 out of 100 slots devoted to women, but a few different names from other lists, such as J.K. Rowling and Sylvia Plath, do appear.

Jane Austen is the only female to appear on the first slide of the Google image scroll for a search for "Greatest Authors of All Time" and "Top Authors of All Time." The scroll does change depending on minor wording changes. Sometimes she's in the middle; other times, she's at the end. Slightly better is womens' placement on Wikipedia's list of 88 bestselling authors: a clean 20% or 22 out of 88 are female, counting Jan Berenstain, half of the Berenstain Bear author team.

This survey of 125 current authors and their "favorite books" turned up an average of two out of ten female authors on each of the "top 10" lists.

Eleven (11) of the top fifty (50) "Greatest Books of All Time" from GreatestBooks.org are written by women, with the usual Jane Austen/Virginia Woolf duplicates, but a welcome surprise in Margaret Mitchell's Gone With the Wind, possibly the American novel with the greatest scope. Nineteen of 50 books published in the 2000s on the "GreatestBooks.org" website are identified as written by women; the list includes multiple titles from several female authors (Zadie Smith, J.K. Rowling). According to the site's author, "This list is generated from 43 "best of" book lists from a variety of great sources. An algorithm is used to create a master list based on how many lists a particular book appears on. Some lists count more than others." This explanation gives some illumination as to how books few have read appear by huge bestsellers; however, there's no algorithm to excuse a truly horribly-written, conceived, nasty book like Philip Roth's The Human Stain appearing on such a list. Next to The Lovely Bones.

I like to just look in this title at random to pick out choice bits.

There's no accounting for this kind of talent.

Coleman had first seen the woman mopping the post office floor when he went around late one day, a few minutes before closing time, to get his mail -- a thin, tall, angular woman with graying blond hair yanked back into a ponytail and the kind of severely sculpted features customarily associated with the church-ruled, hardworking goodwives who suffered through New England's harsh beginnings, stern colonial women locked up within the reigning morality and obedient to it. Her name was Faunia Farley, and whatever miseries she endured she kept concealed behind one of those inexpressive bone faces that hide nothing and bespeak an immense loneliness. Faunia lived in a room at a local dairy farm where she helped with the milking in order to pay her rent. She'd had two years of high school education.

That's the second paragraph of the book. It's told third-hand. In other words, it's not the narrator Zuckerman who's getting it on with Faunia Farley. It's "Coleman Silk," the black literature professor who's passed all his life as white.

Maybe Roth would like to take on a girl who's had a little more than two years of high school education. And who's actually worked for a writing living.

Beta reads are coming in for Like Fire, and surprise! Readers are reading the Helmanders correctly as similar to Vikings.

By the way, here's Astá by Kirbi ... Hull and Gisl are coming ... All characters in Like Fire are based on real people that I know and love; I'm sure it will be very difficult, and perhaps impossible for readers to determine the inspiration for fiery Meria/Redbird, although her hair isn't currently red, and for tall, slender Keile/Sparrow, who views Astá as her mother ...

Hull Krystofferson, the Helmander commander and engineer, is based on Christopher Hull. Before I knew Chris, I had not been close to anyone who was a genuine maker. I knew such people existed, of course, but maker culture was emerging when I was in college. Certainly there were makers at Harvey Mudd College when I was at Scripps, but their impulses were more directed toward chemistry projects (i.e. making LSD, MDMA, Ecstasy) or explosive technology (acetylene bombs). Chris really is a Viking, and this is why when I chose to put a character inspired by him in the book, he was a Viking-type guy. The origin of the name "Helmander" is the name of ancient Viking towns or "Hemland" - ("homeland").

One of the great gifts basing characters on real people had for me, in addition to making the story "come alive" as I wrote it, is to be able to understand the relationships of the story better. Just as in real life, Amy loves Chris and he is very dear to her, though - strange -, so too does Astá love Hull, the alien-seeming Helmander maker, in the book. When, at Meredith's suggestion (seriously ... came to that point in the book and she listened to at least 3-4 sentences of plot and said, "You should make him a quadriplegic, Mother") Hull prematurely launches the dragon flyer and crashes, Astá is willing to do anything to save him. Astá is gradually coming to see that Hull's ability to see the way things work, and to make things, could be the way out of the violent way they have all been living for so many generations. Magic is no solution for anyone's problems. It exists in the Wide World, but is greatly reduced from what it had been in prior generations, thanks to overuse, mis-use, and endless warring over its control.

In the Wide World, just as in the real world, Hull is a "new person." He sees things differently from others, shown most vividly in the book in the scene where Eyvard Eyriksson, his uncle, wishes him to commit suicide since he has lost the use of his legs. No good Helmander would wish to live crippled like that, but Hull sees no reason to do himself in, as he continues to have the use of his mind, arms and hands.

I wanted also to show a different kind of leader, as shown in the relationship between Hull and Markos, who is inspired by Joseph Lenti, who really does work for Chris in real life.

"I don't think there's been a character like the Ice Rooster in any fantasy novel I can think of," I have told people. And it's not "rocket science" - I'll leave that up to Spillikin Aerospace for the time being, except for the black powder rockets on the dragon flyer. Because in real life, there aren't too many other people like Chris. But there will be. And that's sort of one of the points of the book.

May 14, 2014

Hey - all you burglars out there who'd get a treasure trove of BOOKS, a few avocados, a nice kitty litter box and some dog food while I'm gone - there'll be people in my house. While I'm at Baycon over Memorial Day weekend! One good Dario deserves another. His resurrection is amazing considering Broos pierced his neck from left to right. Bled out in his arms.

1. Internet Speed and the Future of Long Term Relationships on Saturday at 11:30 AM in Lafayette (with Kyle Aisteach, S.L. Gray, Carol Queen, PhD (M))

The use of Internet dating services has become widespread, expanding from early-adapter computer geeks to the general population. How is online dating affecting marriages and relationships? How will it change the amount of effort people put into making a relationship work? Will the knowledge that potential dates are easier to find, compared to the pre-Internet era, make marriages shorter? Our panelists aim their forecasting vision on a fundamental area of human experience.

Online hate speech can devastate the lives of the person under attack and everyone around him or her. Panelists discuss effective online responses, ways to support the person, building tolerant communities, and what to do if you yourself are a target.

Yes, I will cover Mr. Moron.

3. KickStarter and How to use it successfully on Saturday at 5:00 PM in Camino Real (with Tom Merritt, AE Marling (M), Liz Martin)

Running a Kickstarter is a lot of work to make it successful. Panelists have run a successful and not not so successful Kickstarter campaigns and can offer tips, tricks and ideas to help you!

I will talk about GoldieBlox' campaign and other successful campaigns I've been involved in.

What are science fiction and fantasy's most powerful love stories, and why do we love them so much? What's the difference between a romance novel and a novel with romance? Find out how romance novels have changed in the last two decades, and how the digital market has opened up a whole new crossover world.

I'm going to have to read up on this ... as "not a romance writer." I signed up for this because of Broos & Asta baby.

Some bits and pieces of science fiction literature have become science fact: cell phones, automated doors that move sideways as you walk towards them, GPS locators, and large, flat-panel television displays, just to name a few. Our panelists discuss these and other ways that SF has changed our world.

May 13, 2014

OK, this one's going to burn. I've been reviewing in-depth marketing information for Chameleon and to me, the lessons are clear. Especially when one views the NY Times bestseller lists.

Here's what we have from this week.

First up: David Baldacci's The Target. Just in time for summer.

Lawyer David Baldacci's first novel Absolute Power was published in 1996. He has over 110 million copies in print. Read this excerpt from one of Baldacci's books for younger readers to get an idea of his ear. All lawyers believe they have one or more books in them; authors like Baldacci and John Grisham (whom Baldacci is currently stomping ... bestseller-wise) are the source of these beliefs.

Next up: Greg Iles. I'll quote his Wikipedia: "Greg Isles is an American novelist who lives in Mississippi. Iles was born in Stuttgart, Germany, where his physician father ran the U.S. Embassy Medical Clinic." Rough, tough stuff. He's also a member of Stephen King's rock band, the Rock Bottom Remainders. Judging by his vintage online photo, he needs a haircut. His first bestseller was Spandau Phoenix, published in 1993. According to his website, "Greg broke the formula adhered to by most commercial novelists when he began to write in a variety of genres." He has "female protagonists" advertised on his website. Dead Sleep, one of these, features "a series of unsettling paintings in which the nude female subjects appear to be not asleep, but dead." You know what? When I go to think of writing about a "female protagonist," the very first thing that comes to my mind is the burning desire to solve crimes connected to nude paintings in which the female subject appears to be dead. And one of them looks like my twin sister.

Not.

Donna Tartt, #3, is like Greg Isles, from Mississippi. This is a major plus; both authors have Faulkner references associated with them. This bestseller and Pulitzer Prize winner went to Bennington (not in Mississippi ... in Vermont) where she associated with fellow literary luminaries Bret Easton Ellis, Jill Eisenstadt and Jonathan Lethem. Here is the plot of The Goldfinch: "A young boy in New York City, Theo Decker, miraculously survives an accident that takes the life of his mother. Alone and determined to avoid being taken in by the city as an orphan, Theo scrambles between nights in friends’ apartments and on the city streets." Donna had 11 years between her 2nd and 3rd novels, and her bio mentions an involvement with Bret Easton Ellis ... this is the "career pause" known to most women. Anyway, this baby The Goldfinch is about art. And set in Manhattan. About an orphan boy.

As to #4, I got nothing but respect for Nora Roberts/J.D. Robb. Nora singlehandedly is responsible for a great number of the female-written bestsellers on the NY Times and Amazon bestsellers over the past 15 years. Nora was blasted by unwarranted plagiarism by another romance writer. Art must be hot, because The Collector's plot is "A writer travels the world of affluent art collectors to learn the truth about what appears to be a murder/suicide."

Maeve Binchy, #5, is one of the charming Irish authors whose voice and gift fueled the sales of more than 40 million books worldwide. When she died in 2012, she was remembered as "Ireland's best-loved and most recognizable writer." Chestnut Street is a collection of some of her best-loved stories set in Ireland. They call it the "gift of gab," and the "luck of the Irish." When Irish eyes are smiling ...

#6, Sue Monk Kidd, has written The Invention of Wings, and the description sets my teeth on edge. "The relationship between a wealthy Charleston girl, Sarah Grimké, who will grow up to become a prominent abolitionist, and the slave she is given for her 11th birthday." Author of The Secret Life of Bees, Kidd hails from Georgia (which is an acceptable substitute for Mississippi, apparently). Sue's got Oprah sponsorship and I guess I'm glad this book is doing well. I'm just so damn tired of books by white people about issues related to people of color. Would rather read a book by a person of color about it. Sue is a nurse and came by her work honestly.

#7 Mary Higgins Clark ... began writing to support her family after a divorce, and made it! But she doesn't any longer write the books published under her name - or so I am told by those who know. She's a "house name" like Betty Crocker. She's been doing this roughly since time began.

#8 Funny, funny Christopher Moore has written another one ... "A farcical mash-up of 'Merchant of Venice,' 'Othello' and 'The Cask of Amontillado.'" In the absence of anything else, this would not be an issue. In the presence of everything else ... is there NOTHING NEW?

Lisa Scottoline, #9, is another lawyer. She is a more recent generation of women to begin writing from home after leaving her law practice in Philadelphia. With a long career, Scottoline is a good writer. She's one of the women who's achieved success in a very crowded male field.

#10 is a James Patterson farm team title, NYPD Red 2 (with Marshall Karp). Patterson's "above the title" status owes to his background in advertising and knowledge of "what people want." In his own way, Patterson has supported other writers ... by developing his stable of writers and package of products. "Detective Zach Jordan is called in when the body of a woman is discovered in Central Park." I hope the originality of setting can be seen from this list as well. If there's any more women's bodies discovered in Central Park, they'll have to start an estrogen garden.

#11 I'm going to cover, because it's Iris Johansen, whom I am also told is a form of "house name" at this point. I actually know people whose favorite author is Iris Johansen. I have had students whose favorite author is Iris Johansen. In 1991 she started writing bestsellers and hasn't looked back. It's comforting in a vague way that Iris' Wikipedia says it's "not notable," just like mine. HEY Wiki-folk, uh, yeah. House name or not, she's sold probably as many books as Baldacci. I'm going to give Iris this - this is by far the most unusual story concept/setting on the list: "The C.I.A. operative Catherine Ling must spearhead the rescue of an American journalist kidnapped in Tibet." Iris. Finger on the pulse of America.

Everything I've said here means: old, tired, last decade's news. "Nobody reads any longer." Well you can sort of see why, can't you? And it's not "their fault."

Amy Sterling Casil, edited by Dario Ciriello: Panverse TwoThe second of Dario Ciriello's all-novella series. There's a reader review up and you'll definitely have to order this book, because I can tell that the "reviewer" didn't bother to read my story and appears to be doing a Harriet Klausner.

Algis Budrys: Hard Landing (Questar Science Fiction)My adored A.J. - passed away June 9, 2008. This is my personal favorite book of his, and is the novel most recently published (1993). You will need to order a used copy of this small Warner paperback. It is of the highest literary quality. I am so grateful that I told him that in hard, solid writing - as soon as I'd read it.

Amy Sterling Casil: Without AbsolutionMy first collection - short fiction and poetry - from 1998 to 2000. Does not include "To Kiss the Star," but does include "Jonny Punkinhead." With introduction by James P. Blaylock.

Book View Cafe Authors: Rocket Boy and the Geek GirlsThe mind tells the story--but the heart inspires it with dreams of what might be waiting Out There. With evocative stories of lost comrades, alien first contacts, and strange, often unexpected confrontations with evolving science, Rocket Boy And The Geek Girls embraces both our pulp-dream past and cutting-edge future.
Thirteen authors (fifteen if you count pseudonyms) from the Book View Café got together one rainy Saturday afternoon with a big bowl of popcorn and reruns of Buck Rogers. They started comparing short stories and a new anthology took form.
Rare reprints, hard-to-find favorites and new tales all combine in this one-of-a-kind story collection, available exclusively from Book View Press.
What happens when thirteen authors get to giggling over implausible titles for the collection? They choose the most illogical and then they have to write something to go with it. So, yes, there are three flash fiction versions of Rocket Boy and the Geek Girls.
Stories by: Vonda N. McIntyre, Brenda W. Clough, Katharine Kerr, Judith Tarr, P.R. Frost, Pati Nagle, Madeleine Robins, Nancy Jane Moore, Sarah Zettel, Amy Sterling Casil, Maya Kaathryn Bohnhoff, Jennifer Stevenson, Sylvia Kelso, C.L. Anderson, and Irene Radford

Book View Cafe Authors: Mad Science CaféFrom the age of steam and the heirs of Dr. Frankenstein to the asteroid belt to the halls of Miskatonic University, the writers at Book View Café have concocted a beakerful of quaint, dangerous, sexy, clueless, genius, insane scientists, their assistants (sometimes equally if not even more deranged, not to mention bizarre), friends, test subjects, and adversaries.